Second Time Lucky
by Essie.Lo0ve
Summary: Amara has had a bad past, linked to a mysterious boy, Ash, and Camp Half-Blood, her old home. When she is rescued by a quest heading back to Camp, her worst nightmares come true. But what if she let go of the past and found a reason to stay? R&R.
1. I Get Rescued

**New story. Lots of ideas. Just read, please?**

**Disclaimer: Sadly, I do not own PJO or any of the ideas for it, but I do have some of my own, and Amara is all mine!**

**One**

He was talking at me again. The pale-haired one – Benjamin, I think he the others had called him? There were three of them. Two boys, one pale, one dark, and a ginger-haired girl named Eleanor.

I wasn't listening. For the billionth time, I tried to tell them that I didn't _need _rescuing, that I had managed perfectly well for three years on my own after…well, never mind.

But my tongue was still heavy from the numbing medicine they'd given me, and the best I could do was open my mouth and make baby noises. I felt like an idiot. It was their fault the Nemean lion had come – they had been making far too much noise. Just my luck I had been camped right above them, in the branches of a tree. And just my luck that the lion had sniffed me out and sent me tumbling down from the tree.

I had been knocked out for most of the fight, but the three half-bloods had protected me and were nursing me back to health. My back had taken a nasty scraping, my arms too, but it was nothing a little ambrosia and nectar could cure. It had been ages since I'd had that stuff. Soon, I would be up on my feet again, and away.

The kids were coming back from finding the dark boy, and they were heading back to Camp Half-Blood. Again, lucky me.

'Hey, are you even listening?' Benjamin snapped his fingers in front of my face, and I blinked. 'Talk to me, Georgina of the Jungle!'

The ginger girl, Eleanor, walked up and crouched by my side. 'Ben, leave her alone. She's only just getting better, there's no need to lecture her.'

Benjamin scowled. I liked him least out of all the demigods. He did a lot of shouting and bossing around – it was his noises that had drawn the lion to us – and he rarely smiled. The dark boy, Oliver, talked little and looked at me a lot, as if he couldn't quite work out how I fitted into the picture. He was just learning about the gods, and our world. Eleanor was kind and gentle, and she talked to me when she fed me soup, even though I couldn't reply.

'How do we know she's even a half-blood?' he asked irritably. 'For all we know…'

'Oh, come on, Ben, she's eaten ambrosia and nectar without burning to a crisp, I think that's a clear enough indication, don't you?' Eleanor rolled her eyes good-naturedly and put a cool hand to my forehead. 'Are you ready for some more ambrosia?' she asked me. I nodded. 'This will enable her to talk, maybe we'll find out where she came from.'

Eleanor broke off a square of ambrosia from its chocolate-like bar and handed it to me. Weakly, I lifted my hand and put in into my mouth.

I smiled wistfully. The food of the gods tasted like spices, the night, palm trees…everything I could remember from home. I closed my eyes.

'Oh, no you don't,' Eleanor squeezed my hand. 'Sit up. In a bit, the ambrosia will start to work, and you'll be able to talk again. All right?'

I nodded again in reply, and sat up, helped by the girl. I felt my muscles starting to strengthen, and I wriggled my toes in my leather shoes.

I coughed. 'I can…talk.'

Eleanor smiled at me. 'What's your name?'

'Amara,' I replied. 'Amara Wilson.'

'Okay, Amara, you're a demigod, right? How old are you? How come you're not at Camp Half-Blood?'

I decided to play dumb. 'What's a demigod?' I asked, putting on a confused expression. 'And Camp Half-Blood… are they code words or something?'

I didn't know why I lied. It seemed like the right thing to do.

Eleanor explained to me about to gods, and Chiron, and Camp Half-Blood. The usual rubbish I had already heard.

Halfway through, Oliver came over.

'She's new,' Eleanor told him. 'Like you.'

Oliver smiled slightly, and then got up and went away again.

'So, one of my parents was a god?' I asked Eleanor, still playing stupid.

'Yes,' Eleanor said. 'I'm a Daughter of Persephone, Benjamin's a Son of Athena and Oliver, we don't know yet either. Is it your mother, or your father, who's mortal?'

I drew in a sharp breath and sat up straight. I wasn't going to relive the pain for her. 'Can't…remember,' I managed slowly.

'You'd better rest,' Eleanor told me. 'Here, I'll take you under the shelter to sleep. We'd better hurry up and get to Camp, though. Four demigods travelling across America? We'll have to find a lift, or something. Come on.'

Eleanor took my arm, and I followed her under the length of canvas strung up between two trees. Benjamin was studying a map, his face serious, and Oliver was watching him.

She leaned me against a pile of blankets, and covered me with one of them. I relaxed and lay back, pretending to sleep. I needed to know what their next plan was, to find out what they were doing here. Now I was in a state of consciousness, I would start to be myself again: wary and self-sufficient, not relying on demigods from Camp Half-Blood to nurse me back to health.

'Her name's Amara,' I heard Eleanor tell Oliver and Benjamin. 'She's maybe fourteen?' I pursed my lips. I was fifteen and a half. 'She doesn't know about us, or at least, she didn't up until now.' I was glad it was Eleanor who had questioned me. She was sweet, but not very clever. If it had been Benjamin, he would have realised I was bluffing.

'We need to speed up the journey,' Benjamin said. 'Now there are four of us, we can't afford to be slow.'

'How about we go into the nearest town tomorrow and…borrow a car?' Oliver suggested. I was surprised at his idea. It was crafty, and surprisingly good. I would have commented, but I was pretending to be asleep.

'I wouldn't know where to begin!' Benjamin said. 'Do you know how to do that sort of thing?'

'Of course,' Oliver said. 'Well, I've read about it…and, it's sort of the same thing, right?'

'We'll see tomorrow,' Eleanor said. 'But we should probably get some sleep.'

I heard rustling, and through the gaps between my eyelids, Eleanor's shape was covered by blankets and she lay down.

The boys went to sleep on the other side of their makeshift camp, and soon I heard them snoring. But my head was too filled with thoughts to sleep.

They were heading towards Camp Half-Blood, and quickly. I needed to get away. We were only in Virginia, but I knew that they would speed up now the threat of monster attacks was bigger.

I couldn't face Camp Half-Blood, not again. Not after what had happened…last time.

As I drifted off to sleep, I dreamt of him: of Ash.

His face was suntanned and framed by messy, curly hair, and his laughing brown eyes were kind. The sun glinted off his polished armour, and his sword was drawn, but he was smiling, happy, determined.

That was the last time I'd seen him.

He smiled at me and took my hand. I wanted to pull away, knowing what would happen and not wanting to think about it again.

'Cheer up, Ammy,' he said, his face fearless. He squeezed my hand and I looked down at our intertwined fingers.

'I'm afraid, Ash,' I voiced my thoughts. 'I don't want you to go.'

'Don't worry,' he said, letting go of my hand. 'I'll be fine.' Liar.

I opened my mouth to say something more, but another boy in armour called out to Ash to hurry up. I didn't care. This was more important.

'Ash…' I began.

But he sighed, torn. 'Amara, I have to go, or we'll never reach it. I'll be back soon, okay?'

No. No, it was not okay.

I must have still looked troubled because Ash slung his arm over my shoulders. He hesitated before bending down to kiss my cheek. I felt myself blushing.

'Stay out of trouble for me, will you?' Ash grinned at me, then turned to follow the others out of the borders. My last glimpse of him was the back of his armour glinting in the sunlight.


	2. Oliver Gets Us A Ride

**I'm not sure how popular this story will be, but I hope you're liking it so far. Because Amara's quite an intense character, it's quite hard to write from her POV, but I'll do my best. It may take me a while to review each time, though, because I'm focusing on my other Fanfic at the moment. Review!**

**Two**

The next day, the sun had been up for a long time before I opened my eyes. I had always hated the sunlight, and the fact that Benjamin was scowling at me when I sat up made it worse.

'Thank the gods you're up,' he said, sounding sarcastic. 'Eleanor thought that the ambrosia had been too much for you yesterday.'

I returned his dirty look. 'I'm not a weakling.'

'So, where do you even come from?' he asked curiously.

I clenched my jaw. 'Florida.'

'You're a long way from home, Forest Girl,' he said nastily. 'How come you're on your own? How have you survived so long without being attacked?'

'What is this, the Spanish Inquisition?' I demanded. 'I thought we had to keep moving, not sit here all day and answer questions.'

'We're only not gone yet because you've been snoring the whole morning,' Benjamin retorted.

'Yeah, well it was your fault the Ne- that lion crept up on us. You guys were making enough noise to wake up the whole forest.'

Benjamin looked me up and down, and I hoped he hadn't realised my slip-up. I was supposed to be playing the dumb never-seen-a-monster-before girl, not my real self.

'Well,' he sniffed. 'Eleanor and Oliver are outside. If you want breakfast, hurry up. We're leaving in ten minutes.'

Outside, the others looked up when I approached.

'Morning,' Eleanor said kindly. 'Did you sleep well?'

'Yeah,' I said, remembering my dream, which had kept repeating itself since I had been out in the wild. Then I smelt the food still cooking on the fire - bacon and fried bread. I hadn't had anything that good to eat in days – the last proper meal I'd had had consisted of a skinny rabbit and bitter herbs from the forest, (which I'd hoped were edible) cooked over a tiny fire which kept going out in the fierce wind. That had been back somewhere in Carolina. I had travelled quite far in four days.

Eleanor loaded up a plate with food and handed it to me. I had never tasted anything as good. Well, I probably had, but I had been near starving when I had fallen out of that tree, and my water stock was running out. I guess I should have thanked the group for nursing me and feeding me, but I didn't feel like being nice. Anyways, they were heading back to Camp Half-Blood, my old prison. Before I could start making a plan of how to get away from them when I was all healed, Benjamin came out of the tent.

'Eat up, Forest Girl,' he told me. 'We're leaving soon.'

I had already finished my breakfast, being so hungry, but I glared at Benjamin and handed my plate to Eleanor. 'If you're so fussed about going, why don't you pack up instead of ordering everyone around?' I said to Benjamin.

He didn't seem to like my snappy attitude, but I didn't care. 'Hey, we saved your life, girl,' he told me. 'We could have left you to die.'

'But you didn't,' I replied. 'So you're stuck with me.' I jumped to my feet. 'Now are we moving or not?'

He was obviously used to being in charge and frowned when I spoke as the leader, but I went over to the makeshift tent and started to dismantle it.

In five or ten minutes, we were all ready.

'Come on, then,' Benjamin said. 'It'll take an hour to reach town, at the least.'

He set off with Oliver and Eleanor, but I had remembered something.

'Call of nature!' I said suddenly. The others turned round to stare at me as if I was an alien.

Benjamin raised an eyebrow. 'Well, go on, then, Nature Girl. We'll carry on slowly.'

I turned around and slipped out of sight, behind the tree where we had leaned our tent up against. There it was, just a few feet behind – the tree which I had been sleeping in when the Nemean lion had leaped up and shaken me to the ground.

I scaled the tree quickly, even though my legs still felt a little shaky from my time lying down and searched the branches. Heaving a sigh of relief, I saw my backpack hanging from a little higher up and scrambled up to unhook it. I unzipped it, anxious, and checked that everything was as I had left it.

There was a jacket, a hairbrush, an empty water container, plasters, (since I had had to make do without nectar or ambrosia) some grubby mortal coins which I guessed came to about two dollars, and at the bottom, a glint of metal: my Celestial bronze dagger.

Since it was the only weapon I had, I had taken great care of it and polished it when I could, so the dagger was in a better state than I was. I glanced at my reflection and groaned. Despite the care Eleanor had given me, I was still dirty, since I had not been able to find a water source for two days, and my cheeks were smudged with dirt. Twigs and leaves were tangled in my hair, which already looked like a bird's nest, and let's just say that I didn't smell like roses.

I rubbed the dagger with the bottom of my t-shirt. I couldn't let the others see I had it, as they still thought I had only found out about their world yesterday, so I carefully put it back into the pack and sprang down from the tree.

I had to run to catch up with the others – they had already gotten quite far ahead. When I had slowed to a walk beside him, Benjamin eyed my backpack.

'You didn't have that before, Forest Girl,' he noticed.

I had already thought about my answer. 'Yeah, I know,' I replied. 'I saw it hanging from the tree I fell from, and remembered I had left it there. There's not much in it, but…' I trailed off.

'Right,' Benjamin said, though I got the feeling he was still suspicious of me. 'Well, we really need to hurry up now; it's nearly eleven o' clock.'

We picked up the pace of our walk, and soon we came to a T-junction. One long road stretched off in either direction, and leading directly away from us, another smaller road lead to a tiny cluster of buildings, faint in the distance.

'So, which way, Smart Ass?' I asked Benjamin.

He scratched his head and wrinkled his brow. 'Hard choice. We could head off towards the houses, but it looks like a small place, so we might not be able to risk stealing a car.' He paused. 'And down the bigger road, I'm guessing there will be a service station, which would be better, as we could contact Camp and take a car without being noticed as much.'

'That's easy,' I said. 'The bigger road, definitely.'

'Yeah,' for once Benjamin agreed with me.

'But…left or right?' Oliver asked.

'You chose,' Eleanor told Benjamin.

'I can't!' he protested. 'What if it's wrong?'

'Just guess!' I said. 'It doesn't matter.'

'Fine…' Benjamin sighed. 'I say…right.'

'Okay,' Oliver said. 'Right it is.'

And we followed Benjamin out of the shelter of the forest and onto the highway.

He had guessed right – only five minutes of walking up the road and we had reached a busy service station.

The good news: there were plenty of cars in the car park and nearly everyone was in the café or buying stuff inside.

The bad news: as soon as we arrived, Benjamin insisted on Iris-messaging Camp using a water-spray gun, and telling Chiron what had happened.

'I'm going to the toilets,' I said.

'Again?' Benjamin asked incredulously. 'How small is your bladder, Forest Girl?'

I gave him glare. 'I just want to make myself look vaguely presentable, Smart Ass. You guys make your call to Camp; I'll be back in no time.'

Finally, he agreed to let me go, as long as I didn't talk to anyone, start a fight with a monster or attract attention.

On these terms, I made my way to the toilets, keeping a look out for anyone acting suspiciously. The last thing I needed was to find a nice monster to rip us apart.

In the ladies, I finally got a look at my whole face for the first time, and it was worse than it had looked in my dagger. My eyes were puffy and my whole face was covered in a layer of grime. My black hair was knotty, twigs were sprouting from the tangles and my hands were a disaster. The dirt underneath my fingernails was enough to grow potatoes in, and there were patches of dried blood on my palms. On my chin, I had a new scar which the ambrosia had obviously failed to heal and my back was still aching from the fall.

I sighed and washed my hands, wincing as the water hit the raw patches. Then I splashed my face with the clean water, relishing the feeling of it running down my neck. Since there was no one else in there, I quickly took off my t-shirt and dipped it in water. It was a hot day, and I was still sweaty from being ill, so it would dry quickly and keep me cool at the same time. With my t-shirt put back on, I bent over and dunked my hair into the basin and got to work with the hairbrush until my curls looked almost back to normal.

I looked better without the dirty face and hair. Maybe that idiot Benjamin would stop calling me 'Forest Girl'. I smiled at myself in the mirror, stuffed my things back into my pack and left the toilets, stopping on the way out to quickly buy a packet of minty sweets with my remaining mortal money.

Outside, the others had finished their call and Benjamin and Eleanor were waiting for me. They all stared when I came over.

'Wow, Forest Girl,' Benjamin said. 'You clean up pretty good.'

'Oh, please,' I rolled my eyes. 'Now that you're done, can we just go? Where's Oliver?'

'He's -' Eleanor would have finished, but I soon saw where Oliver was.

He had just pulled up next the pavement where we were sitting in a shiny, bright red convertible. I wasn't very good with cars, so I couldn't have told you what make it was, but I knew enough to tell that it was _very _expensive and probably went faster than I wanted to think about.

'Hey,' Oliver looked up from the driver's seat. 'Ready to drive?'

Our mouths were hanging open, but Eleanor managed. 'Do you even have a licence?'

'Nah,' Oliver replied. 'But I've driven my mom's car plenty of times.' Eleanor didn't look convinced.

'And did you have to pick the showiest car in the lot?' I asked him.

'Look, this was just the easiest to get into because it was already open,' Oliver gestured to the open roof. 'And the owners had left a spare key in the glove box. Easy as pie.' He jerked his head towards the spare seats. 'We'll be in New York in a couple of days.'

Great. Just great.

'What are you waiting for?' he asked. 'Hop in, guys.'

It was go with them, run off into the unknown or wait for the owners of the car to return and arrest us.

So, amazingly stupidly even for me, I jumped into the convertible.


End file.
